Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

I've been looking at Penance, and I really can't wait until Bliz gets this spell hammered down. It's very obviously a soggy talent because all the top-tier damage/healing abilities require the most work to balance (look at chaos bolt, living bomb, typhoon, thunder bolt and how much they're all changing around in beta). As Blizz finishes it, I'm thinking it will begin to look more like a possibility for a dps holy build. Here are some thoughts:
a) If they keep the talent in, they're not going to scrap the damage part as some people have suggested. holy is a healing tree, Shadow is a damage tree, and Disc is supposed to be a fuzzy utility hybrid between the two. Disc has enough talents that specifically support healing in the upper reaches (for example rapture, which I'm not happy with, considering my holy DPS builds ), they won't make penance healing-only.
b) The damage portion of the spell will be scaled and in-line with the healing-portion of the spell, hopefully without sacrificing too much mana efficiency. If we can add a spell like this to a holy fire/smite/SWP rotation, then we'll be able to lay on the damage. Especially with PI (improved cooldown of PI and Penance with Aaspiration) we'll be able to pump out some high burst DPS.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

Holy can do High sustained DPS, problem is in anything other than 10 man raids you feel like your not bringing enough groups utility to the table. The amount of damage things take seems to shoot up so your offspec (if very crit heavy) healing just doesn't cut it.

I was specced Heavy Disc, Holy up to Searing Light (something like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxg0zhxtbxotfxt0bb) which gives you good DPS, A stupidly large mana pool and lots of little tools. I was constantly saving people with Pain Suppression and the mana usage isn't too bad on bosses as long as you rotate HolyFire,Smite,Smite,Smite,HolyFire,Smite,Smite,Smite etc etc

In my mind at least the expansion enables you to get to talents that you wouldn't have been able to before to really boost damage. For Holy DPS i would go for something along the lines ofhttp://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000
Given the amount of stat boosting talents in the Disc tree the Holy tree compliments offering you 25% of your spirit as spell power in addition to the amount you will be getting from Spirit Buff. This build also lets you throw out a few instant heals here and there.

I personally would go for a Hybrid build, still mainly DPS but offering a few Healing Trickshttp://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000 As you will be fairly High on Holy Crit chance this build gives your crit heals a shield and a 25% armor increase as well as a stacking healing buff/damage .

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

Originally Posted by cssmall

These are the basic numbers I was looking at. Again, this was a controlled test at an equal level of statistics. I will have to consider some of the additions, but the hybrid build from my first thought will gain a lot from getting some things that they weren't able to receive in TBC just due to the lack of talent points. (BTW, my job had several rainy days and I was bored when I did all this; working outside sucks when rain makes it too dangerous. So yes, in other words, I have no life. =D)

Also, yes, I was raiding at that level for DPS. Healing is my primary aim.

You're insane. First of all, you're only talking about personal DPS. Who cares? Holy brings nearly zero raid/group utility. Please get back to me when holy can increase spell damage by 5% for every caster in the group, return mana to the group (especially with potion nerfs) and increase shadow damage of everyone in the group.

Your shadow spec is also bizarre. 5/5 shadow focus? Madness. At any level of raiding this pulls down easily when you have +hit beyond capped. Hi there, there is no +holy damage set bonuses for raiding gear. Holy only becomes competitive if you place said holy dpser into a mana regen group, probably with a ret paladin. Even then, they're not going to outsustain a rogue / dps warrior / warlock / hunter.

You can run simulations of how much mind blast time you actually need to gain/lose dps. Spoiler: 5/5 doesn't work.

You're also ignoring how much VT/VE and Misery contribute to the raid's dps, which in turn lowers shadow priests' personal dps.

So who knows where you were checking, obviously some inconsequential aspect of the game where gear later on trumps all. You might as well be making parses for how level 12 holy dps is better than shadow dps.

Smite builds were fun to play around with with a double smite priest maybe 3 arena seasons ago, when surge of light was broken. Back in molten core, a smite priest could keep up with shadow because shadow gear didn't exist.

But now? That's delusional. Frozen shadoweave alone and misc greens easily put shadow at hundreds of DPS higher than holy in any group setting. You can be pushing +1000 spell damage as shadow without setting foot into kara. What's the max at holy? I doubt it's higher than 750-800 because you lose all of the overpowered +shadow items.

The only numbers that matter are overall raid dps.

Bottomline is if you were outdpsing a hunter in similar gear, its because you were spamming smite and did not have VT up giving hunter maximum mana regen as shadow. In which case your personal dps goes down but your overall raid dps goes up. THAT'S the reason WWS parses include no smite priests, because the one number that people are shooting for on WWS (overall time it takes to kill a boss / dps) GOES DOWN.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

Nuronv, the only problem I've had with deciding on a hybrid build like this is deciding whether or not to take which healing-buff talents. It's easy to say that a holy dps spec has utility because of the extra healing it can offer, but it's hard to me to build a group around an off healer. Having an offtank is an easy-enough concept, but a spec that uses talent points that could be spent on boost DPS in order to pick up a healer's slack in a 5 man? It seems like it's tough to strike a balance, because if you grab all the damage talents, you're nerfing your ability to switch to healing... but if you grab enough healing talents to allow you to heal respectably, you've passed up a lot of the damage talents, and a barely-viable build in the first place becomes unsuited for DPS.

However, I got caught up on your heavy disc build. The idea of using Pain Suppression as the utility you bring to a raid table is a good one. I guess I was tunnel visioned into Surge of Light being the talent that makes the dps build, since it's the talent that mandates heavy crit by giving us our "+bonus damage to crit" so to speak. But pain suppression can be invaluable, especially if you save the life of a rogue or mage or something. Also, it's much easier to use PS reactively as a DPS priest, because you're targetting the boss and know as soon as the tank does when a DPS is about to get pummeled, instead of having to react to a mage suddenly losing 60% of his health, in which case he's a goner without a fast acting NS druid/shaman.

It's kind of reminiscent of a shadow priest when you think of it this way. You're really losing a bit of your damage, but exchanging it for some invaluable utility. I'm really just trying to think of ways to bring more to a group than just deeps.

But now? That's delusional. Frozen shadoweave alone and misc greens easily put shadow at hundreds of DPS higher than holy in any group setting.

Are you refuting Csssmall's data about pure DPS at equal levels of spellpower, frott? I wish you would bring some of your own to the table instead of just dismissing hard numbers.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

Originally Posted by frott

You're insane. First of all, you're only talking about personal DPS. Who cares? Holy brings nearly zero raid/group utility. Please get back to me when holy can increase spell damage by 5% for every caster in the group, return mana to the group (especially with potion nerfs) and increase shadow damage of everyone in the group.

But now? That's delusional. Frozen shadoweave alone and misc greens easily put shadow at hundreds of DPS higher than holy in any group setting. You can be pushing +1000 spell damage as shadow without setting foot into kara. What's the max at holy? I doubt it's higher than 750-800 because you lose all of the overpowered +shadow items.

The only numbers that matter are overall raid dps.

Bottomline is if you were outdpsing a hunter in similar gear, its because you were spamming smite and did not have VT up giving hunter maximum mana regen as shadow. In which case your personal dps goes down but your overall raid dps goes up. THAT'S the reason WWS parses include no smite priests, because the one number that people are shooting for on WWS (overall time it takes to kill a boss / dps) GOES DOWN.

I knew there would be someone getting butthurt over this: did you notice previously that I said shadow's utility was good. Honestly, though, the only reason to bring a Shadow Priest for 50% of guild's is because people don't know how to control their mana. :PShadow isn't exactly stunning on the DPS and renew's not too bad.

Those generated numbers are from a raid situation, generated on their own, with my characters and friends that wanted to ask these questions. The Recount mod was used to gather the numbers. Sorry, the mechanics of the Shadow Priest class are to be a battery. Don't think people are "insane" because they enjoy playing something else and are willing to show the numbers they generated.

I WISH I could do WWS so I could show you. And, you may be right, since you can sit there and leach health and mana the whole fight. Cheerio. Delusional, you may, think me, but you're flat wrong, here, Frott. A Holy Priest running instances and gathering off-spec gear, crafted gear, etc can easily match a Kara ready Shadow Priest. And, then after time, you get off-spec gear again, and can keep climbing the latter up gear-wise if you want. Like I've said before, I'm healer, not a DPS. But, you're clearly a homer if you think that Shadow is meant for High DPS or High Damage, if you were able to match a Smite Priest's DPS, then you'd always pull aggro just because of your mechanics. NONE of which I insulted. This is a discussion, but I've revealed my true opinion in this post about SPriests: most people bring them, because without a battery, they'd never win.

If you would like, I will have a friend brush off his old Shadow Priest and go to a MORE comparable level of your "overpowered" Shadow gear. As to critiquing the spec used for the Shadow Priest, it was considered the "raiding build" for shadow from WoWwiki and then modified using be.imba.hu. Thanks for the info, I'll rework that too. Listen, I don't mean to be a jerk on this, but Holy's not a wimpy ass tree anymore.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

Houndy personnally I've always found surge of light to be a bit naff. As its a 50% chance on crit so you can go for quite a while without proccing. It increases you mana DPM but lowers your DPS due to it inability to crit trigger of the global cooldown. At the end of the day the heavy disc build gives you a discusting amount of mana (was at 16k in kara while everyone else was around 10k) which more than makes up for not having surge of light.

As i said in my post before in 10 mans the ability to switch between the two roles on the fly works well, if a boss requires extra healing or emergency healing is needed you can step up to the plate and play with the big boys

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

No offense, but saying that people use spriests because they "can't control their mana" makes me think you've never gone beyond early T5 raiding. Because early on, you can get by without a shadow priest if you control your mana. Get into BT and Sunwell though, and it gets very, very rough to say the least. Mana pots, life taps, and evocates are the kind of things DPS can't afford to do if you want to kill some of those bosses.

Also, I'd like a more reasonable comparison. Take two T6 priests, shadow priest at 170 haste, 1300 damage, hit cap, 12% crit, holy priest at hit cap, 1300dmg, 18% crit, and stick them in a fight that lasts between 6 and 12 minutes. You'll find the holy priest runs out of mana horribly early without a shadow priest giving him mana, and at the same time he doesn't approach the dps of a good rogue/hunter/mage/lock.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

When I leveled my priest in TBC contect i had a surge of light spec, it was back when it was good (the free smite could proc SoL again even though it didnt crit) and back then i thought it was a not optimal but fun spec to play. Now that im into raiding i think you should drop SoL and go for pain surpression if you want to seriously help the raid. Not only does it save someone from dying but it does the opposite effect of misdirection, it dumps 5% threat instantly and unlike fade the threat doesnt come back after the 8 seconds. This is usefull when you have classes that are not mana limited and generate a lot of threat (locks come to mind) and will help them stay bellow the tanks threat.

edit: I almost forgot, hopefully holy DPS will be more viable with the come of inscription and make smite a more mana efficient spell.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

Originally Posted by MikeDaSpike

When I leveled my priest in TBC contect i had a surge of light spec, it was back when it was good (the free smite could proc SoL again even though it didnt crit) and back then i thought it was a not optimal but fun spec to play. Now that im into raiding i think you should drop SoL and go for pain surpression if you want to seriously help the raid. Not only does it save someone from dying but it does the opposite effect of misdirection, it dumps 5% threat instantly and unlike fade the threat doesnt come back after the 8 seconds. This is usefull when you have classes that are not mana limited and generate a lot of threat (locks come to mind) and will help them stay bellow the tanks threat.

edit: I almost forgot, hopefully holy DPS will be more viable with the come of inscription and make smite a more mana efficient spell.

Chain proccing SoL is a fleeting happy memory of the past, yes, and I wish Blizzard would do something about SoL to make it as worthwhile as it used to be. Seeing as it can proc from heals and causes no threat (I think??), I feel like the talent itself is more of just bonus damage for healers and not really intended for much else. Searing Light might be the last required talent in the holy tree for a holy DPS build, if you wanna go for Pennance. Depending on how it changes in the beta, pennance might make this build work.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

holy doesnt got long enought cast times and it crits are only 150% in effect. With new changes i belive shadow will go over the top dps wise in any fight that lasts more than few mins. Dropping SWP off from rotations making SWD part of your everyday dmg cycle makes kind a lot difference. And what makes shadow powerful is that it has a lot of % dmg modifiers making it very propable there is breakpoint where shadow starts to push out bigger numbers.

Btw i were expecting that SoL uses gcd even smite becomes instant when i said crits are only 150% effect.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

Originally Posted by Karpalo

Btw i were expecting that SoL uses gcd even smite becomes instant when i said crits are only 150% effect.

If they took the SoL smite off of global cooldown, given that it does 100% smite damage 50% of the time when you crit, it would essentially be a glorified "Increases damage done by crits by 50%", which is what any spellcasting tree needs to dps efficiently. Since it gives you a free smite at 1.5 second cast ("instant"), it ends up being, like, 33% bonus damage to crit, or something.

Re: Will Holy Fire make Holy DPS viable?

bottom line... smite is 385 mana per 2 seconds. thats using ~192.5 mana per second with minimal regen while casting (say 50 m/5 ?). however, as shadow, doing 1000 dps (easy with kara + FSW) is 250 m/5. when i checked my rotation of spells for BT (killed 7/9), i came up with using ~85 mana/second. tell me when a smite priest can last a full illidan attempt with no pots, because i can easily do it as shadow.